Monday, 10 September 2012

Readers want you to tie up all
the loose ends, bring things to a close, make it satisfying and logical, and
they want it to feel right.

And they don’t want to hear any
nonsense about realism and how sometimes in life there is no answer, no proper
endings, no closure. But then, ending a story isn’t about realism.

And they all lived happily ever after... What the hell does that even
mean?

The end is just a place for
passengers to disembark. Journey’s end. But what you need to have achieved in
order to call it an ending isn’t always so obvious.

Often, though, the type of ending
that your story needs has been foretold already. In the beginning. It doesn’t
really matter what happens in the beginning, but whatever the tone is, whatever
the mental and emotional state of your main character, by the end of the story
they’re going to be in a different one.

If you start with Little Johnny
playing innocently with his friends, by story’s end his innocence will be over
(a good example of this kind of book is To Kill A Mockingbird, where the first
section is the kids playing in idyllic summer, fearing imagined monsters, and
by the end of the story they know what real monsters look like).

Not that you need to go for the
diametrically opposite vibe, but for a satisfying climax, the sense of journey
and transformation a story requires will be better realised if there’s some
distance between MC at the start and MC at the climax.

Because of this, if you know how
your story starts you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to end it. And the
reverse is true also. If you know your ending, that will give you a leg up on
the opening.

Let’s say our story is about
Milly and her fiancé, Dirk. Milly has a terrible temper, always accusing Dirk
of things he hasn’t done or complaining about things he was supposed to, until
she finally drives him away. She reassesses her life and then meets someone new—Frank.
She keeps her temper in check and then on her wedding day she discovers Frank’s
been having an affair with her best friend, Gladys. Milly flips out and kills
Frank and Gladys and everyone in the chapel.

The story starts with Milly an
angry mess, and it ends with Milly as an angry mess. While you could write the
story as a dark comedy, as a genuine story about a woman dealing with her
insecurity and fears it’s going to feel lacking. You could have saved everyone
a lot of time and just have her kill Dirk for leaving her in the first place.

But say you like the opening.
Milly’s anger drives men away and she spends the story learning how to cope
with it. She meets Frank and thinks all is well with the world, but then
discovers his infidelity. If I don’t have her revert to Livid Milly, where can
I go? Well, since her personal journey was about learning to cope without anger
and fear, I might have her see the situation for what it is—a close call where
she almost married a douche. Instead of becoming enraged as everyone in the
church expects, she could burst out laughing and wish Gladys good luck with the
scumbag.

The events of the story are the
same, but the change in her outlook on life informs her reaction.

On the other hand, if you liked
the ending of the original example, where Milly loses her mind and kills everyone,
then that story should start with Milly as shy and unsure of herself, maybe
taken advantage of and abused. Eventually she can’t take any more and turns on
her persecutors (an example of this kind of story would be Stephen King’s
Carrie).

I’m using quite extreme examples
to show the differences in stark contrast, but it doesn’t have to be quite so
over the top. The key point is to have your MC changed by the experiences they
go through during the story so they end up in a different mental state from where
they were at the start.

Often, you will find that the
first scene will naturally contain the character’s state of mind, although it
may be buried or the scene might be a bit dull. If your character wakes up and
feels crappy about going to work, then that shows he is unhappy with his life
and feels stuck in a rut. But waking up and brushing his teeth isn’t a very
dynamic opening, so the trick is to transfer that same sentiment into a more
interesting scene.

Maybe he’s at the office hating
what he does—still sounds quite dull. Or he could be out in the field on
assignment—opportunities now starting to open up. Maybe he’s in a client’s
small plane and the client ahs a heart attack at the controls. My point is his
lack of enthusiasm for his job can take place anywhere I choose. And because I
have a handle on what the character’s about, even though a reader might not
immediately associate a man screaming as the plane he’s in plummets to the
ground as being about not liking your job, if I know, then I can use it to
create a satisfying ending to the story.

That’s not to say the way it ends
is preordained. He could get a new job he likes, he could find a better reason
to like the job he has, he could even accept his life as it is because of the
things happening in the rest of his life—or myriad other options.

The actual specifics of what
happens and how it goes down are still completely open to whatever you can come
up with, but knowing where you need to get your character to mentally can help
guide you. It’s that process of change that readers react to and find engaging.

Interesting post. I already knew what the ending to my current WIP was before I started plotting, and for me it is to a certain extent like writing backwards to beginning. As for tying up all the loose ends - I hope I will have resolved enough to leave the reader happy but left just enough unsaid to make the return for the second!

The worst endings are those where the book just seems to end at a random place. Like the character comes to a crossroad and can go down one road or the other. Just as he's about to decide...END. (This is most often a metaphorical crossroad, not a literal one.) What's the sense of that? Or like in a couple of movies I watched recently where there's a gunshot and then...nothing, so we don't really know who got shot or if they die or what. Weak, dude. I guess the Sopranos kind of did that and look how that ticked everyone off.

I agree with your assessment. Another excellent post, Moody. I know I don't tie up all loose ends but I do make sure that certain main goals set up at the beginning have a resolution. Whether or not they're happy is another issue!

I've posted before about the no resolution resolution. It's not okay for me to see a character to the end only to be disappointed because the ending had no closure. If it doesn't have closure, for me, it's not a story.

Even top writers can write a so-so ending. I think writers are so exhausted by that opening scene, that opening chapter, then traipsing through the saggy middle, that when they see the end in sight they just drop the ball. The editors don't always pick it up. They're probably exhausted too, lol!

Excellent excellent explanation, Moody. I'm a fan of happy endings, but happy endings can really be just the character's state of mind about what happened during his/hers journey. Everyone doesn't have to still be alive, a satisfying end is imporant to me. I was not satisfied with the ending to Mockinjay because there was enough about the healing in the end (it felt very rushed) considering the amount of trauma the mc (and reader) had gone through together.

I hate stories that leave me hanging. It's all build up and no payoff. And I agree the ending has to be someplace different than the beginning; otherwise, we've just read in a circle so what's the point.

Thanks for visiting my blog and pointing me to this great post. A satisfying ending is so important. The story I'm writing--and any story I read--is ruined if I don't feel satisfaction at the end. Reading your post, I realized that all my characters have changed and grown--except my MC. Thanks for "pointing" that out. :) A new thought for me to explore.

Endings are very important. The books I pick up again and again, are those that give me a satisfying ending. If I come across a book whose ending is completely unsatisfying (even though the beginning and middle were enjoyable to read), i find that I never pick up the book again.

You're so right about that ending being important. I just read a book that I thought was great up until the last chapter, and then it fizzled! In fact, it fizzled so badly I almost threw it across the room. How dare that author do that to me after I'd spent hours reading his prose?

@lee-coming up with a perplexing problem is a lot easier than providing a worthwhile solution. Sadly. a lot of books seem to be headed somewhere really interesting and then fall right at the last hurdle.